My life as a secondary school science teacher.

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My First Practicum

My prac experience was as others before me and after me will also say a real learning curve. My major lesson was how explicit I need to be when giving instructions and asking questions. I became very self-sufficient in my prac and one of the most useful things I did was ask students for feedback on my own teaching. They have a surprising level of metacognitive ability – they know what they like! And they are a resource just waiting to be tapped into. Things I’d do differently:

start with clear expectations of behaviour and outline these. No matter how silly you might think it is you need to be explicit!

don’t change too much: 2 or 3 things that you do should be different to their normal teacher. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel cause they’ll get confused and that’s not good for anyone.

Try to learn their names ASAP but change the format of the Facebook Get to Know you Profile

Hilight the standards for my Supervising Teacher every lesson so that I’d get more meaningful feedback and they wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed.

What feedback I gained from my students or observing other more experienced teachers, I’ve added to my growing list of What Makes a Good Teacher?